


The Old King is Dead / long live the king

by eleutheria_has_won



Series: Prompt Me! fills [3]
Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: (sort of), Aftermath, Child Soldiers, Family, Gen, Motherhood, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace mourns for her son.<br/>.</p>
<p>"I've got a prompt for you! Write about Grace Campbell's thoughts on her children going to the Underland and her son fighting a war at 11/12 years old."</p>
<p>[[From a Prompt Me! on thecityofregalia.tumblr.com . Head there if you want to submit a prompt of your own.]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Old King is Dead / long live the king

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritersAnonymous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritersAnonymous/gifts).



Her son is dead. He’s gone. That’s all she can think. Her son is gone. When Grace looks at the face that used to be his, she can find nothing of the child she raised for eleven years in there. Gregor, her son, is dead. He is gone.

But there’s someone else living in him, so what she sees when she looks at her dead son’s face isn’t a corpse slack in death - it’s an unfamiliar soldier, weary of war, and battered by it. Gregor is not behind those eyes. She knows the face but not the thing she fears behind it. Grace will never know her son behind his own face again. He is dead.

It’s not an easy thing to come to terms with, by any means. But Grace is, above all, _strong_. In the desperate times when her family was starving and her heart felt like it was hollow and crumbling inward, she persevered. She survived that. She can survive anything.

So Grace grieves in private, where no one else can see and realize what’s come to pass, and then she washes her face, puts on her bravest aren’t-we-lucky-to-be-alive smile, and goes to find what was once her Gregor. The weary thing that inhabits his place now, it’s a stranger to her. It’s not her son, but she might be the only one who knows that. Grace can pretend, under the right circumstances. She has to see if the soldier left behind in his eyes is someone she can also love. 


End file.
